Diane Ward’s chapbook when you awake is comprised of fifteen prose sections set in a conversational tone. The speaker is telling a story, explaining, giving instructions to the reader/listener. The poem opens: “well, it’s not just passion fading now. watch the images, the long line of ourselves, wait.” The reader is very much a part of this piece, a part of the “we,” the “you” instructed to “get your fur up.”

As someone associated with Language Poetry, it is not a surprise that there is a preoccupation with language, its implications, constructions, limitations, and ownership throughout the piece. Ward writes: “we are caravans, taught to stand behind who’s in front, hierarchical lines, we made them.” And later: “natural world as shadows of ownership. whose hummingbird? allen’s hummingbird, rivoli’s hummingbird, anna’s hummingbird and the morning dove as in long-anticipated loneliness, shutdown, not as a new day.” In the second prose block the question arises: “what if the language doesn’t do it anymore, if atom means that which cannot be split.”

This is a text that examines what it means to be alive now, a text/speaker that is conscious of the intersection of the personal with the social and political. One of the concerns throughout the piece is environmental, specifically the destruction of natural resources through human abuse and the problems created when humans view the natural world as something to be dominated and owned: “the connected uses of human are shifting, creating narrative or a mass migration of our stuff. don’t the ones with the most stuff do better. or is it don’t do better. if they get stuff it will be better.”

When faced with pollution/chemical smells in the air and plants growing slowly and less successfully, when faced with ideas of death and problems of the outer world at large, Ward acknowledges the tendency of people to escape into themselves : “insufficient desire to be laid in the grave, so we tried routinely to email, eat, care for the past found in shady places, behind bushes.” The physicality of the blocks on the page, the references to borders, frames and “thinking framed thoughts of ourselves,” all seem to be a movement inward. However, the piece concludes with what appears to be a movement out, a possible awakening. Floating away from an empty thought bubble, the poem ends with the action: “to burst.”

Genya Turovskaya

The Tides

Octopus Books, 2006

Genya Turovskaya’s chapbook The Tides is comprised of three long poems. Mostly set in a timeless era of harbors and life at sea, the poems are given a more contemporary context with the mention of cell phone ring tones and men walking on the moon. Turovskaya’s influences are varied, as the poems are not interested in borders or schools. The first poem, “Pax,” opens in a very language-y way and then becomes more lyric. The lyric includes dreams and surreal images: “those first birds / were birthed // viscous & moist // from the black egg / I squatted down / and laid.” “Pax” goes on to experience a sort of derangement of the senses: “my clothes do not love me back // nor my shoes / embrace me”. Romanticism is also present in the collection with traditional romantic themes and characters: “the emissaries are sailors on the sea, are tramps on dry land” (from “Anchorage”).

There is an appealing strangeness to the poems—the reader is largely unable to predict where the poems will go from one section to the next. In “Pax,” the poem almost comes to a pause at the end—stuck on the idea of beginning again, using heavy repetition even when the speaker claims “I will not repeat.” The second poem, “Anchorage,” shifts from more vague ideas to end on a strange solid image:

we made it out of the fog

a figure

swimming to shore with a bag

of winter oranges

lights tinkled around its body

and its eyes

In “Pax,” Turovskaya asks: “do you approach / recede // the battering tide”. Her collection The Tides is not so much interested in battering or brutality but creates a sense of back and forth, an adventure at sea, the sense of a tumultuous inner-state. The Tides is a wonderful little collection full of rich poetry, a promising debut from Turovskaya.

Dan Featherston

United States

Phylum Press, 2004

Dan Featherston’s chapbook United States is a minimalist poem in fifty parts. The book opens with two epigraphs: Walt Whitman’s “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem,” and Robert Duncan’s “What / if lilacs in this dooryard bloomd ?” One would expect the following poem to be overtly about the United States, either the history or politics. However, what follows in the opening sections are brief imagistic poems that could be almost anywhere: first, an image of hands warming around a fire in a trash can; second, “Hanged man / dangled down / through high / blue quietude / & noon”; third, a hibiscus flower shriveling inward. The associations of these images—poverty, violence/death, and natural beauty—are continual themes throughout the poem.

The sections are independent of each other and focus on different things, ranging from subtle to blunt in subject. There are straight forward lyrics, nature poems, poems focused on sound and word play, early Creeley-esque poems (“as if / & as / we can”), etc. Some sections have their own titles which sometimes serve as the setup for the poem’s punchline, or create a sort of call and response. Section 31 is titled “Legalese tautology” and “material / evidence” is the entirety of what follows. In 33, “Conspiracy theory of wind”: “Each nation unconsciously acts out the secret drama of its flag”, the poem takes a more unexpected path from the title. In 30, “Infinite Justice,” the title serves as a point of departure:

Chapbooks can sometimes be hard to find, especially when they date back a few years. As for this chapbook, there is good news; in 2005, Featherston had a full-length collection, also called United States, released from Heretical Texts.

Aaron Tieger

February

Fewer & Further Press, 2006

Aaron Tieger’s chapbook February consists of minimal lyric poems with concise language and sharp images. The first poem is dated 2/1/05 and the last poem in the collection is 3/1/05. In between are titled and untitled pieces that are not marked by date. Whether or not the poems were written daily over the course of the month, they recall A.R. Ammons’ daily poem project/journal Tape for the Turnof the Year both in spirit and in form—Tieger’s short lines could also fit on adding machine tape.

It is hard also not to think of Schuyler’s poem “February” written at 5pm on the day before March 1st: “It’s a day like any other.” Many of Tieger’s poems act almost as diary entries or recordings of the day’s events, as in the opening poem:

2/1/05

Waking early from

dreams of waking early

through blinds sky

mostly white

slight violet brighter

than last week

cats all over

your face on

my face

my birthday

in a month

Alarm

turned off

can’t get back

to sleep.

Despite the sparse language, the poems are full of images and actions, populated by the people Tieger knows (“Chris Rizzo Valentine ”), not to mention the cats, references to the weather, and recollections of the past. In “Two Cafés,” Tieger recalls “a view / no longer there”, and later: “Memories float / down streets / of missing signs…..Cafés / disappear / every few years.” There is also a great attention to sound, like in this untitled piece:

Sweet violet dog violet pansies pansy

blue violet yellow white cream violets

Love lies bleeding

love in idleness

loving idol

love idol

Call me to you

meet me in the entry

Jack jump up and kiss me

kiss her in the buttery

Bird’s eye bullweed

banewort

pensée

heartsease

What’s

the chaos

flower

I’m waiting

for

to die?

February is a nice little collection of Tieger’s poems displayed beautifully in a clean and narrow design from Fewer & Further Press.